Looking for reasons to be cheerful in a year like no other
The annus horribilis that we are currently enduring will never be forgotten. 2020 is the year when the entire population of the free world fell hostage to a virus and, quite apart from the sickness and tragic casualties, we’ve all been locked down, locked up and locked in. As the scientists have been scrambling for an effective vaccine, the rest of us have been scrambling for ways to stay sane, for – as Ian Dury and the Blockheads once put it – ‘reasons to be cheerful’.
With practically all modes of entertainment obliterated – the cinema, the sports stadium, the concert hall, the bingo, the opera, the races, the ballet, the nightclub, the theatre - we have been left, like half-neglected children, to ‘make our own entertainment’. By the time we had finished Netflix there were only two options left; yoga on the kitchen floor and reading (although not necessarily on the kitchen floor). I doubt there’s a citizen in this entire country who does not know what the Downward Dog is by now, something previously only known about in Ashrams. And I also doubt there’s a single citizen who hasn’t read more books in the last nine months than possibly in the previous nine years. Publishing is one of the very few enterprises left standing. In fact it’s thriving.
In these uncharted times, when you could face a stretch in Mountjoy for walking a mere six kilometres from home (cycling the same distance might mean a life sentence and driving it probably warrants lethal injection), the only way we can travel is in our imaginations. And as the immortal Dr Zeuss once said: “The more that you read, the more things you will know. The more that you learn, the more places you’ll go.” We all want to be someplace else these days and a book never fails in doing the trick. There’s also less faffing about in customs and lost luggage.
Here are some choice books published this year, guaranteed to transport you from Waterford to China, from Arizona to Wexford, from Dingle to India, from lockdown to London. And there’s a lot of France and Spain to explore, too, as well as some spots a bit closer to home. Oh, the places you’ll go…
American Dirt by Jeanine Cummins (Tinder Press) follows a mother and child as they flee Acapulco in search of safety in the US. Lydia’s journalist husband has been slain after exposing Mexican gang overlords in a national Mexican newspaper, and the henchmen are now looking to kill his wife and child too. A heart-stopping tale, not least because it’s a true depiction of life for so many migrants awaiting their fates while living in cages in Trump’s America.
Making Ryan’s Daughter by Paul Benedict Rowan (New Island) transports us from Hollywood to Dingle in this account of the making of David Lean’s iconic film. Packed with anecdotes about how cast and crew lived the high life off-screen while the Kerry natives looked on in increasing bemusement, it casts a cold eye on the hubris of film-star fame.
The Tainted by Cauvery Madhavan (Hope Road Publishing), set in India in 1920, has been shortlisted for several awards this year. In the midst of the mutiny of the Royal Irish Kildare Rangers in Nandagiri, caused by news of the Black and Tans’ atrocities back home in Ireland, young Ranger Michael Flaherty falls for a local Anglo-Indian maid, Rose, with unforeseen tragic consequences.
Waterford Whispers News (Gill) is the funniest book I’ve read this year. Just published, with some of the best news items in 2020 from the spoof Waterford Whispers “news” website, but also full of fresh headline articles of Irish and international interest, it’s a consistent howl from cover to cover.
The Women Who Ran Away by Sheila O’Flanagan (Headline) is a road-trip novel that begins in Ireland but covers France from north to south and Spain as well, as two women accidentally thrown together learn the importance of inter-generational friendship, and of coping with their personal upheavals back in the oul’ sod.
Snow by John Banville (Faber) In the winter of 1957, a highly-respected County Wexford parish priest is found murdered in the home the Osbornes, a local Anglo-Irish family. Detective Inspector St. John Strafford, a Protestant member of the Garda
Síochána, is assigned to the case. With more layers than a mille-feuille, this is vintage Banville. The murder mystery novel of the year.
Hamnet by Maggie O’Farrell (Tinder) is a firm favourite for the Novel of the Year Award in this year’s Irish Book Awards and is a fictional account, based on fact, of the life and death of William Shakespeare’s only son, who died in Stratford-upon-Avon from bubonic plague. Shakespeare named his Prince of Denmark after his little boy. This novel is a glistening woven tapestry of imagination and history.
The Good Family Fitzgerald by Joseph Di Prisco (Rare Bird Books) is about wealth, crime, ambition and the Catholic church in contemporary America. The Fitzgerald family hurls from crisis to crisis in this exceptionally fine novel, one that persistently reminded me of the style of Irwin Shaw’s Rich Man Poor Man. A sweeping family saga and a biting social commentary, Di Prisco is a remarkable writer.
The Bird in the Bamboo Cage by Hazel Gaynor (Harper Collins) is a novel based on fact, about the Japanese takeover of an English boarding school in China during WWII.
These children of English missionaries, along with their teachers, were later incarcerated in a prisoner-of-war camp. A heart-rending tale of courage under fire in hostile territory.
That Place We Call Home by John Creedon (Gill) is a relaxed and informative ramble around our native countryside, in search of the origins of place-names like The Valley of the Mad and The Land of Robins. In a style as relaxed and easy as his TV series, Creedon may not take us ‘out foreign’ but he has plenty of exotic stories to tell, about the origins of our many strange and evocative Irish place-names.